You've got it backwards. Until there is high demand for hydrogen, there is (economically) no reason to move to eco-friendly, sustainable ways to generate hydrogen. Using current hydrogen production technologies, there simply wouldn't be enough hydrogen to power all-hydrogen transportation. However, the demand for hydrogen simply isn't high enough to move to better production processes. By getting hydrogen powered vehicles on the road and increasing the demand for hydrogen, things like HTE become economically feasible. New power plants can be built with HTE in mind from day one. And there's research going on now to retrofit existing power plants with HTE production.

See, this attitude is the problem. It's not about whether or not you truly have something to hide. It's about whether or not your government could use its unfettered access to your personal communications to associate you or your circumstance with its profile of an "enemy" or a "criminal" without regard for context. It could be something as simple as placing you at the scene of or finding motive for a crime you had nothing to do with, so you find yourself the target of an investigation, or facing an indictment. Even if you win the trial (because it turns out their evidence was only circumstantial and not enough to convict), your life is ruined. Your friends and family will suspect you may actually have been guilty. You will lose your job. You'll be out legal fees. Or it could be something along the lines of building a profile about you and putting you on the top secret "terrorist watch list" because you once made a joke in an IM to a close friend that met some automated criteria. Or maybe over time the criteria that associates somebody with a terrorist changes, and the government starts targeting people who closely fit your political beliefs, geographic region, ethnicity, religion or circle of friends. Perhaps you won't even know this until you try to board a flight, or exercise a constitutional right. Not to mention there are over 4000 crimes in the US code alone. Are you 100% certain you have never broken any of these statutes? Further, even if you trust your government not to abuse this data, our government has shown the world that it's ok to spy on its citizens because it even does that itself. It's a welcome for any other nation, friend or foe, to likewise intercept, datamine and correlate online behavior for building profiles on American citizens.

Because everybody is too swept up in party politics to care about content and actually fixing things. It's much more fun to be part of a rivalry.

Seriously, this bill was bad, but too many people here on Slashdot are incapable of seeing how. It AUTHORIZES mass data collection and surveillance, just puts some extra parameters around it. Shouldn't our goal be to shut down mass data collection and surveillance?

That's funny, because the Republicans tell me the exact same thing - a vote for a third party is a vote for a Democrat. Tell me more about how the Democrats are better than the Republicans on government spying, warrantless wiretapping, stop-and-frisk programs, interstate border checkpoints and cash seizures. Hint: they're not. They both want to datamine everything you do online. They both want to fill prisons with non-violent criminals while letting the violently insane mix into society as if there's nothing wrong with them. They both want to pretend drug addictions don't exist, and let those suffering from real addiction only find help from their dealer. I was to believe the Democrats were going to "Change" all that, but they're exactly the same. Saying is not the same as doing. By electing the same old shit, we're never going to see voting reform, term limits or districting reform. By electing the same old shit, we're never going to see any real issues addressed, just those that the two parties know are divisive enough to polarize the electorate and guarantee their reelection.

You have only proven my point by claiming a vote for a third party is a vote for a Republican. I still get told all the time that it's my fault a Democrat was elected Governor of Virginia because I voted for a third party. The fact is, many people only vote Democrat or Republican because they don't want "the other guy" to win. The only way to fix that is to institute something like instant run-off voting, but Democrats and Republicans won't allow that. They won't even allow third party candidates to join them in a public debate.

A vote for a third party is a vote for a third party. Anything else is a vote for the status quo, and a vote to continue the distractions that only serve to empower the two parties

I picked one up yesterday. I like the form factor. It's not as bulky as my MOTOACTV, but it still seems to have a lot of usefulness. Some of the things missing out of the gate include the ability to do voice input if you're on anything but Windows Phone 8.1, the ability to load music on it and use it without your phone for a run (with bluetooth headphones - something my MOTOACTV can do), and I really wish it had NFC so I can use it for mobile payments.

As for the first two gripes, those may get fixed with a future software update. The last one I guess I'll have to get over. I can use my phone.

All in all, it seems Microsoft may finally be thinking outside the box. Not everyone wants a microtablet on their wrist, and with the right software updates, this thing could be just as capable.

Posted
by
samzenpuson Wednesday July 23, 2014 @07:48PM
from the by-your-powers-combined dept.

Deathspawner writes A lot of people have never been able to understand the logic behind Microsoft's Windows RT, with many urging the company to kill it off so that it can focus on more important products, like the mainline Windows. Well, this is probably not going to come as a huge surprise, especially in light of mass layoffs announced last week, but Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella has said that his company will be working to combine all Windows versions into a unified release by next year.

retroworks writes: Cracked.com is increasingly setting itself apart from the 1970s B-Movie-Mad-Magazine days, with some interesting online writing and a huge following on Facebook. Today, Cracked posted an article on the top ten "geek" gifts for Valentines Day, going to tired old staples like "one ring to rule them all" and a "chunk of gallium". Ok, I'd dig the gallium. But can Slashdot suggest another valentines day gift besides "non-BETA"/.? (The answer may be "NO")Link to Original Source

archmcd writes: Claire from abettergeek.com takes a look at two puzzling UI design decisions from two separate OSS projects and explores why the developers' egos prevent them from competing with more responsive commercial products that actively solicit and consider the feedback from their user base. Pidgin back in 2006 decided to abolish the manually resizable input box, and Firefox more recently changed the behavior of the quit function in its OS X version, puzzlingly in a way inconsistent with its behavior in other modern operating systems.Link to Original Source

It's BS that Snowden is unwilling to come back to the US to stand trial. I'm sure there are plenty of great lawyers who would work pro bono to take his landmark case, and if he was willing to fight, he might be able to affect more change to the government spying program and achieve the goals he set out to reach.